I have been playing around with Home Assistant for just a little while now, and while I am impressed with what it does, I find the documentation and the examples to be less than helpful. One thing I wanted to do was simply add a “card” of web links to the UI. Since the Home Assistant interface (Lovelace) is web based you would think that this would be easy.
Continue reading “Adding links to web pages in Home Assistant”Perspective on card shuffling
The largest U.S. manufacture of playing cards sells approx. 100,000,000
decks of playing cards per year. This can be expressed as 108.
Home automation, part 2
This is an update to https://robertjwallace.com/home-automation-smart-home/.
I am finally beginning to move from the X10 system to a more modern system, despite the cost. My existing system is an hybrid of Philips Hue and X10. To integrate the X10 with Alexa I use the X10 CM19 transceiver with the mochad linux driver, and ha-bridge, a Philips Hue emulator. This allowed me to use Alexa to control the X10 system.
Continue reading “Home automation, part 2”Riffle stack
This is something I am playing with.
Effect
The basic effect is that four aces are placed into the deck at random locations and then the deck is shuffled multiple times. Then five hands of poker are dealt out, with the dealer getting the four aces.
Method
Continue reading “Riffle stack”Another cutting the aces
Here is another method for cutting the aces. You start with a well shuffled deck. I usually have the spectator shuffle the deck several times.
Take the deck back and perform my “two step cull“, which will bring the aces to the top of the deck.
Continue reading “Another cutting the aces”CATO
This is a simple four ace trick that is self working using the CATO principal (Cut and Turn Over). I present it as a lesson in fate, that your choices in life don’t always matter.
Start with four Aces on the table, face up. Add three face down cards on top of each Ace.
Continue reading “CATO”I am a cat lover
I have to admit that I am a cat lover. I can tolerate dogs, some I even like. But cats have my heart. One thing I enjoyed when I was traveling was seeing and taking photographs of cats.
Cat in Valbonne, France
NW Portland, Oregon
Aubry, cat that visited the office, Portland, Oregon
Cat in window, NW Portland, Oregon
Word games for Scrabble training
I enjoy word games like Scrabble and decided to write a couple of games that I could use both for the pleasure of playing, and also as training aids for playing Scrabble and other word games.
Anagram game
The first I wrote is an anagram finding game, simply called wordgame. It shows seven “tiles” any you try to find all of the anagrams.
Word finder game
The other game I wrote is a “word finder“. It can be played on mobile (phone) or desktop devices.
Axtell Lineage
See the book “Axtell Geneology“, my grandfather is listed on page 286.
| Person | Birth year | Death year | Age | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jane Axtell (Mother) | 1920 | 1995 | 75 | |
| Joseph Eugene Axtell | 1889 | 1945 | 56 | |
| John Stockton Axtell | 1845 | 1935 | 90 | |
| Rufus Dodd Axtell | 1815 | 1847 | 32 | |
| Thomas Axtell | 1780 | 1853 | 73 | |
| Daniel Axtell | 1748 | 1826 | 78 | Fought in Revolutionary War. Bio |
| Thomas Axtell | 1727 | 1749 | 22 | |
| Daniel Axtell | 1673 | 1735 | 62 | |
| Henry Axtell | 1641 | 1676 | 35 | Immigrated to US |
| Thomas Axtell | 1619 | 1646 | 27 | |
| William Axtell | 1587 | 1638 | 51 | |
| William Axtell | 1561 | unknown | ||
| William Axtell | 1541 | 1568 | 27 | |
| John Axtell | 1496 | 1553 | 57 | |
| Henrie Axtell | 1474 | 1541 | 67 | |
| Henry Thomas Axtell | 1435 | 1500 | 65 | |
| Thomas William Axtell | 1381 | 1418 | 37 |
Wallace Family Tree
I have traced the paternal linage back to my great-great-great grandfather. Most of this came from the family Bible and was cross checked with records available on the web. My maternal lineage goes further back and can be seen here.
Continue reading “Wallace Family Tree”